I have to confess that I haven’t played a car-based video game in a long time. I’m not sure if it was Night Driver or Cruisin’ USA, but I am lost when people start talking about how GTA 3 or 4 or 5 was better than 7 or whatever. I really don’t care, and I don’t know what makes up a “good” car-based game, but in my imagination, I can think of plenty that would be terrible. Can you?
How about Dealer Row? In this one, you play against a time clock and have to visit as many dealers as possible to buy a new Khundai Mountainous that your partner wants and get the best deal possible. I could show you a picture of the Mountainous, but it’s a crossover so generic (except for the pointless creases on the side and “distinctive lighting signature”) that you’d forget what I showed you ten seconds later anyway.
You can secure a deal at one place, but if you go and try to beat that deal at a dealer across town, there’s no way to ensure you can go back and get the same deal from the first place later. Level 2 involves getting the best trade-in value, financing rates, and trying to avoid add-ons like TruCoat. Oh, and you have to buy a car that day. Don’t buy or get screwed? You lose, Game Over.
Reviewers would dub it the “Sh**tiest game ever” and “A total soul-sucking waste of time.”
A worse one would be called Autopian – The Quest For Clicks. You play an automotive writer, and you need to keep coming up with posts until something hits and you get “clicks” from views. Three or even four “stories” in the game’s “day” is not unheard of, and you have to beat a Google algorithm that changes over the course of your play time in Level 2. You compete online against your friends, fighting for the same “audience” as set by the game’s software.
Once again, reviews of the game would be awful. “Terrible, and completely unrealistic since nobody would be required to do anything like this in real life.” If they did, though, I think they’d actually love it.
Matt suggested “24 Hour of Le Mans Steward,” where you simply add weight to competition cars.
Now it’s your turn. What horrendous ideas for car video games can you come up with?
Top graphic images: DepositPhotos.com
“By Here, Pay Here Lot Manager Simulator”
Destroy your soul with:
Usury finance rates for struggling desperate single parents’As Is’ vehicle conditions and concealing slapdash repairsIntentionally hiding recall noticesBait and switch pricingBribing the local DA to look the other wayRepo cars after 1 day for late paymentInstalling remote trackers/disablers on all the cars
“I sold that car yesterday, but have these other ones available!”
Apologies readers, my bullet point formatting broke
You are driving I-95 from Maine to Florida with your ex-wife, stepmother, and phoneless teenager.
I keep thinking of crazy rules, but I think that is all that is needed. It’s like a flight simulator from hell.
(IMHO, you win if you make it to Rhode Island?)
Definitely gets my vote. 95 in Connecticut is final boss level.
Plus, having to stick to 95 to get to Maine is also as torturous as the proposed car mates. There are many, many other routes that are far quicker to avoid RI and the Massholes entirely.
Crazy (robo)Taxi
-You play as a freelance technician for various automated taxi companies. Wander a busy metropolis on your Bird scooter racing against the clock to arrive at a Waymo that has become stranded because someone left the door open or a Cybercab that detected a loamy dump deposited in it.
-Beat competing freelancers to the call and complete it successfully to earn money to upgrade your scooter. Earn bonus points for riding the scooter through oncoming traffic, having near-misses with pedestrians, or catching air.
-Your rating is critical! Arrive and complete service calls quickly to earn better reviews. Arrive late, or forget to Febreze the Cybercab after cleanup and you’ll be docked stars, meaning fewer calls to extend your shift time.
-If you run out of time, or drop below a 4 star rating, it’s Game Over.
sounds kinda fun, actually!
Forza Motorsport: Hellen Keller Edition
The controller gives haptic feedback, but the screen is black and there’s no audio.
Car Safety Simulator
Includes:
Fastening a seatbelt (for which the controls will be horrendous–you need to control where you look, where each hand goes, and at what angle, all so that you can position everything exactly perfectly)
Adjusting mirrors
Adjusting your steering wheel position
Adjusting your seating position
Readjusting your mirrors
Turn on headlights
Bonus missions include:
Install child seat
Put squirming child into child seat correctly
Absolutely no driving!
“Find The 10mm Socket”
Followed by the sequel, “Fish the 10mm Socket out of the Lower Control Arm”
The final boss level requires removing the control arm so it can be tilted just the right way for it to fall out of the 11mm hole (after a screwdriver is inserted into the 1/4″ drive end to control the orientation.
Parking Garage Pursuit* – at the wheel of gradually larger crossovers/trucks OR more low slung sports cars, you have to find a vacant spot in a multi level urban garage before the timer expires.
* I don’t mean the first level of the actual video game Driver (which itself is from the Walter Hill movie The Driver). That was actually fun.
That just becomes a drifting game and you know it.
The only car-video-game I’ve played in the last 30 years was Mario Kart on our Wii. Before that it was probably Pole Position at the arcade back in the early ’80s.
The world’s worst car video game would be a truly realistic racing game with EVs where you had to stop for 15-25 minutes to recharge while the ICE vehicles blew by after a 3-minute refueling stop.
Nothing against EVs, I plan on owning one someday. I just think having a game with EVs vs ICE cars would be the worst car video game.
I-74 Oasis: The Revenge
You’ve got leaks of varying intensity on all four tires of your late-70s land yacht and need to stop to fill them at the next gas station you see.
Just introduce as many points of friction as possible that typically get smoothed over in video games. Mind-numbing enough to be boring, but enough of a hassle that you can’t zone out.
Older Car Smog Check: Will your Italian tune up (driving your car fast for a half hour) be enough for your car to pass smog? Or will you need to take it in for repairs that may or may not fix the problem? Will said repair be more expensive than the car’s net worth? Will it be done in time before your registration expires? Enjoy the adrenaline rush of owning an older car in a smog check state!
I guess the sequel is Inspection Time. I have never lived in an inspection state; England has MOT. Germany has inspections.
“Uber: You’re the Driver” New Year’s Eve Edition. Get people home from Times Square. Bonus points for star ratings, penalties for bodily fluids. Realistic soundtrack of weeping and/or angry drunks insulting your family.
“Will It Fit” where you have to try to maneuver a giant, lifted diesel truck into various tight parking spots while the parking lot gets further and further congested from the backup of cars waiting on you to park.
Will It Fit part 2: loading items into various cars. Levels include Costco, IKEA, Home Depot, and Freshman Dorm.
Was going to suggest Rush Hour: Miami, but that would frankly be too exciting. Plus it’d be derivative of whatever the new GTA is going to be.
So for your consideration – School Pick-Up Queuer. You sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic, idling for 30-45 minutes.
Rush Hour: 401
You’re stuck in the 18 lane wide section of the 401, the busiest highway in North America. You must travel a distance of 16km (roughly 10 miles). It takes 3 hours, and nothing of note transpires.
I vote it gets made and we make Thomas Hundal get 100% completion.
Service Writer Simulator ’26
The worst driving video game…hands down…already exists.
Desert Bus
And we have Penn and Teller to thank.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Bus
Mic drop here.
Came here to say this. You beat me. Take your smiley face.
To riff on your Dealer Row idea, even better/worse: you are living paycheck to paycheck. Then the transmission in your 2005 Odyssey shits the bed, and you need a ride NOW. So you have to go deal with buy-here-pay-here lots and try to make it out with your sanity and finances intact.
My own 30 second idea: let’s play Chase the Electrical Fault in an Italian Car! Spoiler alert: you never get to drive the car.
The sequel has you attempting to make routine drives to work, school, ect while needing to strategically park to avoid the car being repo’d. The longer you dodge the repo man, the better your score. You can play minigames to disassemble the dashboard looking for the GPS tracker and a wiring puzzle game to try and disable it without also bricking the car.
Oh man that’s literally perfect. And sad.
Sure.
E.T. tries to get a modern Canyonero to fly but the thing is too damn heavy so it crushes the FBI instead.
DMV Paperwork Simulator: Kei Edition
Penn & Teller’s Desert Bus already exists and definitely qualifies.
However, if we had to start from scratch, I’d suggest “Black Friday Parking” in which you must navigate endless mall lots, parking garages and streetscapes at low speed, dodging pedestrians, bicycle delivery, Amazon vans double parked, and other drivers on the same quest to find an open parking space as near as possible to the destination objective. Parallel parking counts extra. It’s possible to run out of fuel/battery.
Forza Horizon: Atlanta Metro
Ungran Turismo 34 – Trader Joe’s Parking Lot. You’re trapped in an endless search for a parking space in a lot that’s specifically designed to promote fender benders. You get points for actually scoring one of the ridiculously narrow parking spaces, getting into it cleanly, and then getting out before the person in the car next to you opens their door and dings yours. Points are lost for failing to avoid cars suddenly backing out of parking spaces into your and/or shopping carts that come randomly out from between other parked cars. Expect to spend long periods of time with your car motionless and exposed to damage while someone takes forever backing into a narrow space that their unnecessarily gargantuan SUV really doesn’t fit in.
Final level: A Trader Joe’s in the same parking lot as In-n-Out
There is a parking lot at a strip mall with a Trader Joe’s at one end and a Whole Foods at the other end. I HATE that parking lot. It is insane.
Ha, we were typing variations of this idea at the same time. Mine is waiting approval because I included a link?? (new site feature??)
This! My only at fault accident in a car was in a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
Level 3 includes a graphically poor simulation of going into the store (basic as possible graphics), coming out and then trying to find your car in sa sea of nearly identical white crossovers. Yours does have one minor “distinguishing feature, which you hopefully looked at before you walked away. Points deduct every 5 seconds as you search the lot. Negative points for pulling out your registration to from game inventory “wallet” to remind yourself what your plate number is. Big negative points for hitting the panic button on your key fob to flash the lights and honk the horn, even bigger points if your doing this attracts the attention of the Lot Security Cushman guy or the Cart Fetcher guy.
New! From Rock Throw SquareCube SoftEnix NaughtyGerbil! It’s FSD the FULL SELF DRIVING GAME!
Slide that disc into your system and hit the FSD button to start! Then watch attentively as your car drives itself while you eat Mac N Cheese, drink a hot chocolate and dip some chicken nuggets in ranch. Can you read an e-book on your phone while still looking at the screen? I see you nodding off…
FSD the FULL SELF DRIVING GAME! Loading itself on a system in your house soon!
That’s just Gran Turismo B-spec mode!
I miss B-spec.
Warning: at random intervals, the game will try to run over a child. If you don’t stop it, it will delete a random file off your hard drive.
Also, you have to keep your hands on the controller or else it sets off aggressive warnings.
So “Dealer Row” is just “Leisure Suit Larry” with the sleaze turned to 11.
Wow – there’s a title I haven’t thought of in a long time!
Joe Isuzu?
Test Drive: Coal Country
You get to drive the best and fastest cars through the amazing back roads in the Appalachians but every time you get to a particularly great section of road you get stuck behind a train of dump trucks that you can’t overtake.
“Remove the seized broken bolt” the video game
The sequel: “Remove the broken tap”